It's a Christmas miracle

And no I am not talking about the fact we somehow made it through the holidays so far in one piece. You know when I started this blog thing I thought I would have a hard time after a while coming up with things to blog about. That is definately not the case. Christmas was awesome but before I get into that I wanted to share this real quick. Go to this link and under the course titled "Introduction to Bank Teller Training" notice the last name of the instructor? Yep, that's right, just call me Professor Gundersen. It's spelled wrong I know but that's just the story of my life as far as the name goes. So as long as people sign up I am going to be a part time college teacher. Cool huh?

So now on to my Christmas miracle. As previous postings have mentioned I have been working on this doll house fixing it up for Savannah for Christmas. It was definately used with plenty of wear and tear. I was pretty intimidated to take on the project but I thought it would be so neat for Savannah to have something like this. My intimidation came from several areas, first I have very limited tools and second my skill and knowledge of this sort of stuff is pretty slim. I know people that could build a house from the ground up but unfortunately those are not talents I have worked on or tried to develope. But I took on the project and figured I could figure it out. In the begining it was pretty simple, it needed to be refinished, so I bought a sander and went to town.

That part wasn't so hard just dusty and time consuming. I should probably point out that the original maker of this doll house was very skilled and it was very finely crafted. That didn't help the intimidation any. The fear of messing up something so finely built was very prevalent. So as I would work on the doll house little ideas of things I should do next would start to come to mind. Now keep in mind that I have no prior experience to fall back on for these ideas to be coming from. But I would just get an idea and see in my mind how it would work. We wanted to do siding, mostly because the sides had permanent marker on them that would have taken 12 coats of paint to cover up. A friend suggested 5 gallon paint stiring sticks that you can get for free from places like Lowes or Home Depot. So picture this in your mind, I am aproaching the counter of the painting department at your friendly neighborhood Lowes. There was a highschool age looking young man behind the counter. "How can I help you?" "Hi, do you have those five gallon stirring sticks?' "Sure, how many do you need?" he asks as he pulls about 4 out from under the counter. "50" I reply. He didn't hide his look of shock very well. "Well, ummmm, I can maybe give you this many" He pulls out about 10 more. "You can try our other store down by Costco" I am persistant" I can pay for them" He kinda stammers again and shakes his head as I realize he wouldn't even know how much to charge or how to ring them up, they are after all free. "Would it work if we talked to your manager and worked something out so I can pay for them?" A very long pause as I could literally watch the wheels in the kids head working overtime. "How many did you want again?" "50" I reply. The kid kinda looked around quickly as if he is about to do something he shouldn't then he starts to quickly count them out onto the counter. "Thank you" I tell him and he asks "So you got a big painting project or something" "Actually. its going to be siding for a doll house." I could be wrong but I'm pretty sure the look on his face was something along the lines of I can't beleive I just gave him all of those sticks for that. He's not even going to buy paint. I quickly left not giving him time to change his mind and take them back. I felt kinda bad after he looked so upset but I did offer to pay for them after all.

So everybody out there make sure you shop Lowes! They are great, so much better then that Home Depot place. (there maybe the recommendation on the world wide web will pay for the sticks) :) So I asked a friend to borrow his table saw and he helped me cut the sticks down. The sticks were long enought that cutting off the handle plus about an inch and they were just the right length for the siding. It turns out my staple gun that I bought for hanging up Christmas lights is also a nail gun. I bought the little nails and added some wood glue and away we went. At this point I had finished staining and painting the inside and out so it was time to start on the roof. Somehwere I had gotten the idea that I needed to do trim. So I found something at Lowes that would work. At this point though I realized I would have to cut an angle for the peak. At this point I hit panic almost. All I have is a hand saw, I had no way to measure an angle let alone really cut it right. I had never done anything like this before and didn't know what I was going to do. I was thinking about it for a couple of days and I had been working on something else on the doll house. I was thinking about it before falling asleep one night and as I was waking up that morning I was having a dream about the peak and I could still see in my mind how exactly I needed to lay the trim on the peak, how I could trace the line and how I needed to cut it to make sure the angle was right. The image stayed in my mind all day and that night within 45 minutes of starting I had my peak done filled with a stainable wood putty (purchased at Lowes of course, notice a trend here) because of a crack while I was cutting it and stained.
I call this one my major miracle #1. Miracle #2 came Christmas Eve. All I had left was the shingles, We had measured the square inches and ordered off of an online doll acesories website and we had ordered an extra 250 shingles for good measure. Well I was half way through the second side of the house when I realized I was going to be short. Instead of 7/8 between each row of shingles I was supposed to do 1 inch. Well when you have over 60 rows that 1/8 adds up. I looked at what I had left and measured and realized I was going to be about 3 rows short or around 100 shingles needed. I was soooooo bummed. I told Kira and we both couldn't believe we were this close. I could be wrong but I was pretty sure there was not a store open at 1 am Christmas morning selling doll house shingles. I was really upset but I figured I would just do as much as possible and hope she wouldn't notice until we could get more shingles to finish it up. So I kept glueing and gluing when I realized I was getting pretty close and I wasn't running out of shingles. I actually sat down and counted out enough shingles for all the rows I had left and then I counted out enough shingles to finish a trim along the peak that I had pictured in my mind but since given up on given the shingle shortage. In the end I had a total of three shingles left over. I have no idea how it happened. It literally should not have happened. I know some people out there will probably say you just measured wrong or counted wrong. Maybe your right, but if you had been there and seen that tiny pile of shingles and looked at what you had left to cover you would be as amazed as I was. I showed Kira and she couldn't beleive it either.
So she loves it, it was absolutely perfect. I am so excited that it turned out so well, more then a little shocked but very happy to have it done.
So that is the doll house and this is now a very long posting. I guess I had to make for not posting for over a week huh? There is so much more to cover for Christmas but that will have to be another posting. Merry Christmas!